BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC
19
in insurrection; but being disunited, they have not thereby improved their condition: the Bornean Government always threatening them with calling in the Kayans to subdue any opposition. The Muruts and Bisayas of Limbang are the most impoverished people I have ever met,
My own findings concerning the sultans of Brunei during this period show quite conclusively that they supported and frequently had financial interests in pirate fleets.
Brunei throughout the nineteenth century is pictured by most authorities as a decrepit principality whose chief characteristics are political weakness and anarchy.
Brunei is in a state of anarchy and the sultan too mixed up with trading affairs and piracy to care for administration of justice or the welfare of the country.8
That less than sanguine description was written in 1854. Almost twenty years later the situation remained generally unchanged:
The picture that has been presented to us is of an aged prince devoting the last years of his life to the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth... ruled by his petty rajas, whose first aim is their own aggrandizement.9
By the middle of the 19th century the physical look of Brunei, built over the mud flats of the Brunei River, had changed only in terms of its now lack of pretension and prosperity from what Pigafetta had observed three hundred years before. The following is a description of the place by Raja James Brooke of Sarawak—taken from an 1841 entry in his journals. It describes the town and Brooke's reception by the sultan's court, and contrasts rather vividly with that of Pigafetta.
**24th At 7 A.M. the state-boat, a shabby concern, decorated with yellow flags, arrived; at eight the letters were borne away under a salute. Thus we had a second time the satisfaction of getting rid of the mob at an early hour.
"25th At 9 A.M. I started with Williamson in the gig, with the long-boat in company, carrying the presents. On approaching the town, before the ebb had run long, it appeared to be a very Venice of hovels, a river Cybele rising from the water. For those who like it, the locality is not ill chosen. The hills recede from the river, and form an amphitheatre; and